Intersections between the global economy and gender structures in the workforce in relocated industries

Abstract

This study examines the impact of industrial relocation on gender relations in the Tanger–Tetouan–Al Hoceima region of Morocco. Having detected the importance of diversity among workers in relocated industry, our objective is to show how the global process shapes the local. To this end, we carried out 114 biographical interviews with relocated industry workers in the aforementioned region, which we analysed using grounded theory, identifying the ways in which gender relations are interconnected with global dynamics. The key dimensions that emerged in our analysis as interacting with gender were marital status, occupational status, and the status of being an internal migrant to a major industrial city or a native. This intersectional perspective acquires meaning in a theoretical scheme that shows the global–local interconnection and the importance of social action. We identify two profiles located at opposite poles in terms of privilege and access to resources, as well as a range of cases in between that illustrate the configuration of social and employment realities in the relocated industry: married men with middle to high occupational status, born in Tangier or Tetouan, and single women with low occupational status born in depressed areas of the country.

Keywords:

• Intersectionality
• Morocco
• feminism
• industrial relocation
• globalisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The stock of foreign direct investment went from $8.842 billion in 2000 to $72.94 billion in 2021 (UNCTAD 2022).

2 Al Hoceima was annexed to the region in 2015. However, it is important to mention that (1) the bulk of our fieldwork was carried out in the period 2011–2014, prior to such incorporation and (2) the province of Al Hoceima has not benefited in the same way from state investment.

3 These interviews are part of the research project ‘Re-constructing the Field’: Reconceptualising the Relationship between Migration and Industrial Relocation in Non-border Regions of Morocco and Mexico’, funded by the National Research Plan of Spain’s Ministry of Science and Innovation (CSO-2013-40646).

4 Incidents in grounded theory are defined as a part of the content that the researcher isolates and separates because it contains one of the symbols, keywords, or themes considered relevant to the data itself (Glaser 1998).

5 This refers to the model defined by Fraser (2016) consisting of the institutionalisation, mainly during the nineteenth century, of a gendered division between ‘productive work’ and ‘reproductive work’. The former is the sphere of men and has economic recognition, while the latter is the sphere of women, paid with ‘the coin of “love” and “virtue”’. To be viable, this model requires this gendered division of spaces and that the wage received by the man is sufficient to support the whole family.

6 Although the term ‘remittance’ usually refers to sending money back home in international migration, here we use it to refer to economic collaboration with households in the regions of origin. 

7 This concept refers to the fact that ‘during paid work time, the individual must manage his or her domestic responsibilities and, during private time, must organize or otherwise manage his or her professional responsibilities’ (Ruíz-López et al. 2017, 35).

8 This model is related to women’s incorporation into regulated, paid employment, where the two adult members of a household work outside (Fraser 2016). It also has been referred to as breadsharing (Reid 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Project P20_00343 financed by the Regional Ministry of University, Research and Innovation of the Junta de Andalucía and by FEDER.

Notes on contributors

Rocío Fajardo Fernández

Rocío Fajardo Fernández was awarded a PhD in the social sciences in 2022. Her thesis was titled The Intersectionality of Relocated Industry in Morocco. After four years as a pre-doctoral fellow in Granada, she began a tour of Andalusia. She started working at the University of Seville and is now settled at the University of Huelva, where she has had the good fortune to teach on her research interests: gender and migration. Among her most important publications are ‘La construcción mediática de la migración en el Mediterráneo: ¿no-ciudadanía en la prensa española? [Media Construction of Migration in the Mediterranean Sea: Non-citizenship in the Spanish Press?]’ (doi:10.25115/riem.v6i1.419) and the book chapter ‘The Deindustrialisation of Textiles in Southern Europe: From the Perspective of Gender’ (doi:10.4337/9781789901436.00019).

Rosa M. Soriano-Miras

Rosa M. Soriano-Miras holds a PhD in sociology and a degree in political science and sociology from the University of Granada (Spain). She is a member of the Institute of Migration. Her latest publications include ‘Desarrollo industrial, trabajo y migración: el caso del norte de Marruecos [Industrial Development, Labour and Migration: The Case of Northern Morocco]’ (doi:10.22325/fes/res.2022.89) and ‘International Comparison of the Evolution of Sociological Research Topics in Two Indexed Journals (1995–2018)’ (doi:10.5477/cis/reis.175.145). Since 1996, she has been Professor in the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology at the University of Granada. Her main fields of research are migration, gender, and the sociology of globalisation. She is also a member of the SEJ 129 Research Group: Social Problems in Andalusia.

Antonio Trinidad Requena

Antonio Trinidad Requena holds a PhD in sociology and a degree in education from the University of Granada. His most recent publications include ‘Border and No-Border Labour Markets in Mexico, 2000–2010’ (https://doi.org/10.21670/ref.1811011) and ‘La capacidad predictiva en el rendimiento escolar del capital económico y cultural de las familias del estudiantado en España y Marruecos [The Economic and Cultural Capital of Families as Predictors of Student Performance in Spain and Morocco]’ (doi.org: 10.15366/reim2020.29.010). He is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Granada. He was recently Dean in the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology at the same university.